


Second-best

by Sylindara



Series: basketballpoetsociety Team Battle 2014 [8]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Characters without names, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:16:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylindara/pseuds/Sylindara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You either live under the shadow of the Generation of Miracles. Or you don’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second-best

Things come easy to them. Easy enough that they get bored. And when children get bored, they play pranks. It's a rule. But the kind of pranks a set of twins is capable of is different from a normal child's prank.

Children, being children, are not put off by censure. They simply escalate. The pranks they play become very different from a normal child's.

Perhaps their parents had thought having a proper outlet would help. But what aikido teaches them is how to be sneaky; how to catch people unaware. Most importantly, what aikido teaches them is that some things don't come easy.

They start playing basketball in middle school. Basketball does come easy, all the easier because of their experience in aikido. They stop playing pranks. The new game on the basketball court is so much more fun. And the way people's face twist into tears isn't so different from the pranks they played before anyway.

And then they slam up against the immovable wall that is Teikou. The same wall that so many others had come up against and failed, because there is no other option when you face the Generation of Miracles. In a way, that makes things worse. There is nothing special about their struggle, about their loss. So what if they made Aomine Daiki foul? When it comes down to it, they are just like everyone else. Losers in the face of the inevitable domination of the Generation of Miracles. What is so special about them? About their basketball? About their aikido? About the fact that they are twins? It is meaningless on that court. Teikou doesn't even look interested.

For once in their life, they find something that doesn't come easy – that leads them to try harder. The people around them think they have changed. They think that they take basketball seriously now.

They haven't changed at all. They've always taken basketball seriously. And it's no different this time either. They will face Teikou again next year. This time they will make them cry.

But in the end, they fail. There could have been no other result going up against Teikou. But this time failure is even more bitter because they do not even rate a full game against the entire Generation of Miracles. They are evaluated and found wanting. That, more than anything else, hurts the most. Basketball doesn't come easy after all.


End file.
